


we were wild and fluorescent (come home to my heart)

by possibilist



Series: perfect places [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, guys i dont know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 05:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14585625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: 'you nod, lace your fingers even tighter; you can’t imagine letting her go. it’s getting colder and she hunches up on the walk home and you don’t know how to say it; you’ve never been good at saying things, but you shrug out of your jacket and put it on her shoulders. ‘lexa,’ she says, ‘no, that’s okay.’ you shrug.  she sighs and puts it on fully, kisses your cheek and takes your hand again.'same universe as pls could you be tender — they just keep fallin in love (lexa's pov)





	we were wild and fluorescent (come home to my heart)

the second date you go on you take her to a very highly rated retrospective. it’s your favorite museum, and you pay for the tickets and you walk through, tell her little facts you know and she grins and takes your hand once you pass a series of paintings about vaginas that make you blush, despite every single effort not to. 

clarke makes you stop in the middle of four huge paintings, one for each season, and her grip on your hand tightens. she’s an artist, you know, or she told you this reluctantly, lightly.

she doesn’t say anything, just takes a step closer to the painting you think is about winter. it’s warm outside, sweltering and muggy in the city, your skin sticky even just from the walk from your apartment to the bodega on the corner, but she sucks in a breath and you take in her bright, sunny hair, the blue dress she’s wearing, the color of her eyes and the horizon line on a clear day. she doesn’t look like winter, not at all, and the painting is dripping with deep purples, a mourning, a loss. there are words scribbled to one side, about sleep and a poet and a dream about a monster. or maybe you’re reading it wrong, because there are stubborn spots of yellow on the canvas as well, and it’s pale but alive, like the palm of your hand, clammy and nervous and joyful; sometimes they sting.

clarke clears her throat and turns to you and wipes her eyes quickly with a little laugh.

‘it’s one of my favorites,’ she says, and you almost don’t know what to do, or say, and you maybe forget to breathe because she’s so  _honest_ , and you’ve never been brave like that.

you kiss her, right in the middle of the four seasons, just once, softly but you hope she knows that you mean it. you kiss her and she kisses you back and you feel your heart taking root in your body.

she sighs and kisses your cheek and starts off toward the next set of paintings. you spare one glance back, and read, just barely,  _warm in ray of winter sun_.

_//_

she stays over at your apartment after you get very, very drunk drinking tequila and eating tacos at the bar nearby, and when you got home she pressed you up against your door and you shoved your leg between hers with a gratifying, and loud, moan, until anya cleared her throat from the couch, nursing a bottle of merlot and a bowl of popcorn.

you’d rolled your eyes and clarke had blushed and you’d tugged her to your room, laid you down on your bed and you’d kissed her until you started to feel dizzy, which was embarrassing but you’d pushed her back, gently and regrettably. she kissed your forehead and pulls your shirt back down, snuggles in beside you with her head on your chest, little puffs of heady, tequila-warm breath against your neck.

when you wake up you’re hungover, groaning, and she’s not next to you but the bed is warm and her shoes are still flung in the corner so you’re not worried.

you walk out into the kitchen and she’s swallowing some medicine, which you think is advil, so you walk up behind her and put your arms around her waist, sleepy and soft.

she startles, a little, and you don’t know if you’ve done something wrong, because all you’d wanted was advil of your own, honestly, but you back up immediately and she turns to you and looks a little helpless and a lot stubborn and you realize, then, the force of her. people don’t stay, people have never stayed, and you lived out of a garbage bag for your childhood; you never had enough food and one time when you were thirteen you had asked the foster father you were staying with if you could get a new notebook and he was drunk and shoved you so hard into your bed that the frame broke against your shoulder.

clarke looks at you and her expression makes you think something  _terrible_  is going to happen, that she’s going to leave and it’s only been a little while but you think it would hurt you, and deeply.

‘i take anti-depressants,’ she says, and the relief you feel almost brings tears to your eyes before you remember that this is something she very reluctantly shared with you.

you take her hand and squeeze and kiss the crook of her neck before you pull her into a hug.

‘okay,’ you say.

she sighs, just once, and nods against your shoulder. 

//

you know you love her when you’re on the Q train, going from some dumb, packed market in midtown she’d wanted to go to back to her apartment by prospect park, and she had gasped and turned around when you were going over the bridge.

she’d told you all about the light, the resolution, the city skyline, as the train had kept going and she’d tried to take pictures of it all, this perfect moment, on her phone.

she’d smiled at you, and you’d felt dazed, and she’d taken your hand.

‘i’m glad i saw that with you,’ she says, as you’re climbing up the steps at her stop.

you nod, lace your fingers even tighter; you can’t imagine letting her go. it’s getting colder and she hunches up on the walk home and you don’t know how to say it; you’ve never been good at saying things, but you shrug out of your jacket and put it on her shoulders.

‘lexa,’ she says, ‘no, that’s okay.’

you shrug. 

she sighs and puts it on fully, kisses your cheek and takes your hand again.

//

you’re at your friends’ housewarming party, wine and cheese themed, and clarke is away for the weekend with her friends, celebrating the end of exams. you get very, very drunk on rosé like you’re a sophomore in undergrad again, because you feel achy and school is about to start and you’re young, really, and your students expect you to have so many things figured out, and you don’t.

you sit on the counter and eat a startling amount of smoked havarti and laugh, though, as your friends try to sing hamilton, and someone offers you more wine so you take that too.

clarke texts you that she’s arrived safely at her parents’ cottage and sends a picture of octavia already holding up a fish and raven scowling behind, and you laugh. you almost type  _i love you_  but you’re far too drunk and so you hit backspace for probably a minute and then send hearts instead.

you’re about to put your phone away when it lights up again.

**costia:** _how are you?_

your breath catches a little, like it always does, because you had been in love with costia for years, and she’s beautiful and her smile can light up rooms. you’re older and you’re not the same people you were back then, back when you climbed out of your dorm window and and climbed into hers because you’d lost your student ID at a party and you just needed to be near her, because your shoulder hurt and you couldn’t stop having nightmares.

you climb the stairs to your friends’ roof, and the air is cool and fresh, fluttering after a summer downpour. you call her instead of texting, because the screen is blurry and you miss her voice, and she seems surprised when she answers but happy anyway.

‘i met someone,’ you find yourself saying.

‘that’s good, lex,’ costia says, and your fingers ache. ‘are you drunk?’

‘very,’ you tell her, and she laughs. ‘she wants me to meet her parents at her graduation.’

‘you’re scared.’

you debate hanging up. 

‘lexa.’

‘yeah, whatever.’ you take another gulp of wine.

you know costia smiles when she says, ‘they’re going to love you.’

you clench your jaw and apologize when you hang up because it starts to rain again.

//

she traces your tattoos one night in bed, as she often does, propped on one elbow and curious.

she doesn’t ask about them, and you don’t offer, but she murmurs something about how beautiful they are and that’s enough.

you kiss her with tears in your eyes, because some cover scars and some are a kind of scar themselves. you taste salt.

//

you try to teach her to skateboard, one fall day, and she laughs so hard so many times she can’t even make it twenty feet without the board shooting out from underneath her.

‘clarke,’ you say, ‘you need to  _focus_.’

‘i am the most uncoordinated person i know,’ she tells you. ‘it’s not going to work, babe.’

you sigh and dramatically and in slow motion show her how  _easy_ it is, and her eyes glaze over a little bit.

‘were you looking at my butt?’ you ask, incredulous.

she grins. 

//

you’re knee deep in grading midterm essays on the crucible when clarke bursts into your apartment, still in her scrubs, a fleece jacket from the hospital on over them, and when she takes it off and flings it to the floor, you see she’s  _covered_  in blood.

you’re stuck, you don’t know what to do, because you know about the boy she loved who died, and she knows about your parents, and you know how you get into fights and she chain smokes—but you don’t think any of this is her blood; she is hurting and you don’t know how to take it away.

you walk over to her and gently take her hand, ask her what’s wrong. she shakes her head and you sit her down on your couch, go into the bathroom and start running a bath. when you walk out she hasn’t moved, so you go and pour some bourbon into a mug and walk back to her, put it in her hand. when she smells it she nods minutely and it would be cute if she wasn’t so  _sad_ , and you take her hand and lead her to the bathroom, check the water before looking into her eyes and when she nods you lift her top off.

she’s not injured, anywhere, no cuts or bruises, and it has always astounded you, how few scars she has. she lets you take off her pants, her plain underwear, her bra, and she gets into the tub without a word. there’s blood on her neck and her arms and you sit on the edge of the tub and wet a washcloth, lather soap, your most relaxing, that you still buy at the market because it’s where you met her, it’s where you started to fall in love.

when you gently, as gently as you possibly can, start to wipe off her collarbones she starts to cry, quiet, heaving sobs.

a child died, in her hands, his blood everywhere. she tells you this, and you feel the ache acutely, because you love your students and because your girlfriend is hurting and because you were a hurt child, once.

her sobs eventually turn into sniffles and eventually she sighs, meeting your eyes finally, and hers are clearer, more resolved.

you tug on her earlobe with a crooked smile and she rolls her eyes and she dries off and puts on some of your pajamas while you heat up pizza for her, make her a salad even though she hates them.

she dutifully eats it, though, while you read her the worst lines from the essays you’re grading, and she laughs. she makes you hot toddies and you eventually put your papers aside, and she takes off your glasses and kisses you.

it’s a thank you, and it’s a lot of love, and you think of stones pressing someone to death, and you think of how to take them away.

//

you’re busy yelling at your long jumpers about their form during warmups when you see a flash of blonde hair and when you look over, clarke is sitting in the stands next to some of your coworkers—and friends—she’d met at a few happy hours.

it’s a shitty JV track meet and it’s probably going to rain, but she gives you a dorky thumbs up and your students are far too old to be making kissing noises but they do it anyway.

you make them run an extra lap and clarke laughs and she kisses you in the parking lot later, against the hood of her car like you’re teenagers, tugs on your track jacket and traces her tongue against your teeth, not stopping even when it finally rains.

//

you  _groan_  and swat at the offending hand, trying to take away the duvet you’d dragged to the couch after you’d woken up with a terrible fever and thrown up twice, texting your principal that there was no way you could go today.

‘clarke,’ you whine, and you curse the sunny, huge windows and the bright  walls in the apartment you’d moved into together because when you crack an eye open the light stings and gives you an immediate headache. ‘let me suffer in peace.’

it’s dramatic and someone laughs, but it’s not clarke, and you sigh when you pull the duvet down a little from your face and see abby.

‘oh,’ you say, and reach around for your glasses that you’d flung somewhere on your coffee table.

abby hands them to you with a little smile and puts the back of her hand against your forehead, and she’s so gentle and motherly you immediately feel like you’re going to cry.

‘clarke sent me,’ she says. ‘she got held up in surgery but she said you had a fever.’

abby hands you two pills and tells you that they’re fever reducers and will help you sleep, and she’ll stick around until clarke gets home, just in case you need anything. you take them and she hands you toast and gingerale that you slowly work your way through, drowsy by the end, and she settles on the far end of the couch and flicks on the tv. you fall asleep but wake up sometime later for a moment, and you can’t wait to tell clarke her mom watched hours of mtv.

//

you pick a fight, because you’re exhausted from AP exam prep and clarke has been working insane hours and you’re frustrated. you miss her and you’re too stubborn to tell her that and she’s too stubborn to figure it out, so she yells at you about not taking the recycling out and you tell at her about leaving a candle burning in the bathroom yesterday and she huffs into your bedroom and when you try to follow, still seething about the potential fire hazard, she slams the door.

you put on shoes and slam the front door on your way out, and you only realize until you’re down the block, picking up wine from the store around the corner.

you sulk back home, take the long way but you’re in shorts and it’s getting cold with the wind at night so you don’t stay out, and you roll your eyes at yourself and hit your buzzer.

‘hello?’ clarke’s voice is tinny and irritated but you’re beyond relieved she answered after a few rings.

‘hey,’ you say.

she hangs up and you roll your eyes and hit the buzzer for a full two minutes and forty-eight seconds before she finally answers.

‘ _what_ , lexa?’

‘i forgot my keys.’

she doesn’t buzz you up.

‘and it’s cold.’

still, nothing.

‘i bought chardonnay.’

there’s a pause but then, ‘the new organic one?’

‘yeah.’

she  _sighs_ , long and hard, and you want to continue to be angry and annoyed but you’re so fond of her and it makes you smile. she buzzes you up and opens the door and you hand her the bottle.

she rolls her eyes and puts it on the front table and kisses you hard. you work her shirt off and she reaches inside the elastic of your shorts and fucks you on the couch, fully clothed and residually mad, but afterward you take off your clothes and cuddle on the couch and drink the chardonnay she likes but you think is too oaky—but she’s happy, so you have it too.

‘missed you,’ you say, and she kisses your shoulder.

‘missed you too.’

//

you’re at the park and there’s a pet adoption fair and she glares at you from behind her sunglasses but you just shrug innocently.

you walk away from it with a tiny, stalky grey pitbull with bright blue eyes, and clarke makes a big fuss about making sure he doesn’t eat her shoes or pee on her rugs, but you walk home to him curled up on her lap while she dozes on the couch, clearly exhausted after a night shift, and you kiss the crown of her head and he licks her cheek and she smiles.

//

on your birthday, which you genuinely cannot stand, she doesn’t say a word but tugs you into a clumsy, soft hug and rocks back and forth in your kitchen, until you’re swaying together, dancing to a song floating from the old record player jake had given you for christmas.

 _our love is a star_ , it plays, and you want to fold your body into hers, learn all of the crevices you can’t quite touch, know her until you don’t remember anything else.

//

it’s cold outside, again, freezing and white and gloomy, for four days before it the storm finally breaks. it’s early, early morning, when clarke trudges in with a big, heavy sigh, and it’s a weekend so there’s no need for you to be up but you love her, so you get out of bed and sit in the bathroom yawning while she takes a hot shower and mumbles about her day, the surgery she performed, how good she’s getting at her sutures.

you feed her pieces of fruit because she acts too tired to eat them on her own, which makes you laugh, and her hair is still damp but you let her lay down in your lap while you sit on the couch, run your fingers through the tangled waves.

it’s dawn, in your apartment, and it’s freezing outside, you know, but clarke breathes deeply against your leg, tender and safe, and you understand, now, maybe: the winter, the sun, the warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> find me shitposting/ask me abt how much i love them on tumblr @ possibilistfanfiction


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